New Bedford High School '74 Reunion Historical Walking Tour

Join Bruce Barnes as he shares some of his favorite historic New Bedford properties with a reunion of the New Bedford High School Class of 1974. 00:00 – Introduction 00:27 – James Arnold Mansion (1821, remodeled in 1873), and the history of the Arnold family, the Rotchs, and the creation of the legacy that founded the Arnold Arboretum, in Boston’s Jamaica Plain. 07:03 – Nat Smith designed Colonial Revival house with rare curved-glass windows. 08:19 – The transition of neighborhoods from early 1800s mansions of whaling merchants to the current mansions which built to house the influx of Textile Era executives. 10:18 – Peabody & Stearns designed Queen Anne Victorian from the 1870s. Peabody & Stearns, among other notable buildings, designed the original Breakers, in Newport, RI. 13:44 – The famous William J. Rotch Gothic Cottage. This National Historic Landmark Gothic Revival cottage was built in 1846 to a design by the noted New York City architect Alexander Jackson Davis. The Rotch family inherited and moved to the James Arnold Mansion after Arnold’s death in 1873. 18:33 – The “Whalehouse” is an Italianate Renaissance Revival designed by Solomon Eaton in 1855 for Henry Taber as a wedding gift for his daughter Abby Taber Hunt. It earned its Whalehouse name as it was rented to Herman Melville’s sister. It is rumored that Melville stayed here when visiting New Bedford. 24:25 – The “Dr. Abbe” or “The Pink House” was originally built for whaling merchant Gilbert Russel in 1805. It was remodeled into its current, exuberant Italianate Victorian appearance by Dr. Abbe when he moved here in the 1860s. 27:4 – The Grace Episcopal Church was founded by a group of businessmen who were leaving the Friends Meeting (Quaker, or Religious Society of Friends) during the Great Schism in the early 1800s. The current building, designed by Henry Van Brunt, dates to 1880, and was substantively rebuilt after a fire in 1987. Please subscribe to this channel: http://youtube.com/stevesboston?sub_c... Thanks to the New Bedford Whaling Museum, Spinner Publications, the New Bedford Free Public Library, Digital Commonwealth, and Google Maps for selected images. Please join the New Bedford Preservation Society, at http://www.nbpreservationsociety.org/...